


Longing for Home

by fleurofthecourt



Series: Codas, Tags, and Missing Scenes -- Supernatural [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, Gen, Home, Homelessness, Human Castiel, M/M, POV Castiel, Pining Castiel, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 06:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurofthecourt/pseuds/fleurofthecourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a frustratingly human feeling, this desire to belong somewhere and not be able to. It was painful in a way Cas couldn’t describe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longing for Home

“Where to, Cas?” Dean asked. 

Cas raised his eyes in weary, irritated frustration before wordlessly climbing in the Impala. 

The question was pointless. 

Dean knew where he wanted to go. Where, for reasons far too well-known and for reasons completely unknown, he couldn’t go. 

To where Dean couldn’t take him. To Heaven as it had once been. To Heaven before he’d blindly killed his brethren. To before Naomi and Metatron had come along. 

To where Dean wouldn’t take him. To an orderly bunker in Kansas. To the promise that Sam and Dean would take him in. To before Dean had told him to go. 

He wanted to go home. 

It was a frustratingly human feeling, this desire to belong somewhere and not be able to. It was painful in a way Cas couldn’t describe. 

He could no longer count the nights he had rolled his sleeping bag out on the Gas N’ Sip’s cold tile, intent on sleeping, only to find himself pressing his face into the soft fabric as he fought tears he couldn’t stop or completely explain, praying sleep would claim him. 

But sleep wasn’t always the respite that he hoped for. For when he slept, he dreamed. And dreams inspired unpredictable outbursts of these overwhelmingly new and raw emotions. 

He woke from nightmares where he relived what he had done to Heaven. Where Metatron took his grace and falling angels perished. Where Dean told him in an endless echo that he couldn’t stay. 

Those dreams told him again and again why he couldn’t go home, and waking from them should have been a relief. Yet, he woke to the hard floor of a gas station and remembered that, because he had no where else to go, and he had tried to make the best of a bad situation, it had become his home. 

Those dreams were painful because they happened. 

The pleasant dreams, however, were painful because they hadn’t. 

He tried not to wake from the ones where he found himself back in the memories of the old autistic man. Where he found himself in the Bunker and Sam and Dean taught him about human things like rock music, the uses of salt, and feelings. Where he found himself in the front seat of the Impala, glancing between the stars and the open road and Dean. 

Those dreams told him again and again why he wanted to go home. There were things that he found that he missed and things that he found that he wanted that the dreams granted to him. Waking to find that he didn’t have any of them seemed like a particularly unfair trick on the part of his subconscious. A trick that caused a strange ache, one he sensed no medicine could fix, to settle in his chest. 

He thought, perhaps, that the cure was for the dreams to become real. 

However, as he sat in the Impala now, finding himself in the exact setting of one of his favorite dreams, he found that that ache hadn’t dissipated at all. He supposed that like with the dreams, this was going to end, and knowing that made it all the worse. 

There had to be a reason behind all of this, Cas knew, but not knowing what that reason was only seemed to make the ache stronger.

But if Dean hadn’t told him any of the why before, he wasn’t likely to now. And if he were going to take him back with him, he wouldn’t have asked where to go. They simply would have gone.

So Cas stared downwards and tried to focus on the less nuanced pain of the cut of thorns on his palm and the sprain in his wrist, wincing as he experimentally pressed against them. “I believe I need medical attention.” 

Dean looked down at his hand and frowned. “Yeah, let’s get you patched up.” 

Once he told Dean where it was, they drove to the local emergency clinic in almost complete silence. 

Not that Cas minded silence, he didn’t believe that space needed to be filled with empty words --one of his greatest shortcomings as a Gas N’ Sip employee was his inability to fully grasp the concept of small talk --but this particular silence weighed on him, taunting him with all the things that Dean wasn’t saying. 

He was almost relieved when they were inside the clinic. Being there gave them both a purpose, something to do that wasn’t avoiding the obvious question of _why_ and the apparent answer of _I can’t or won’t tell you._

Dean started sweet-talking the receptionist into getting Cas treated quickly as Cas took a clipboard with completely incomprehensible forms on his non-existent insurance and medical history. 

Cas preferred _can’t._ It implied that Dean wanted to tell him, and he liked to believe that. After all, it was becoming more and more evident that Dean wanted to be around Cas every bit as much as Cas wanted to be around Dean. Only circumstances unknown were preventing it. 

Dean’s fingertips grazing his palm as he offered a forged insurance card and Dean’s breath warm on his cheek as he leaned over him to offer suggestions for his imaginary history of heart disease and immunization suggested as much as the rest of the evening that this was true. 

So what truly bothered Cas was that Dean didn’t seem to believe the circumstances were going to end. Earlier, Dean had been trying to see the potential of Cas’ human life the way he wanted to -- normal, happy, and Dean-less, the first two parts likely a consequence of the third. 

But Cas knew that the first two parts were best fulfilled by Dean, if his dreams and current experiences were anything to go by. In them, being human didn’t seem nearly so difficult or empty because Dean was there, helping him muddle through. 

There was even, as Ephraim had seen, a part of him that was tired of endlessly fighting battles with the best of intentions and finding himself in the wrong, that, thought, if the circumstances were right, and he had the home he wanted, he’d prefer being human. 

“Cas?” Dean said, brushing his hand over his shoulder. Cas realized he’d been dizzily drifting out of consciousness. Evidently fatigue was a side effect of pain. “They’re ready for you. Do you want me to come back there with you?” 

The part of Cas that knew Dean was going to leave him here wanted to tell him _no._ But he still found himself nodding. 

He was grateful too when Dean took his other hand and gripped it tightly as the doctor set his wrist. He found that it took his mind away from the pain and placed it instead on his connection to Dean. It made him feel anchored the way he so desperately wanted to. 

But as they left the clinic, with Dean steering him out the door with one hand and gripping a prescription in the other, Cas knew that that feeling was going to be fleeting. Dean was only going to leave again. 

As they approached the Impala, Cas looked up at the night sky, trying to find anything to think about that wasn’t what Dean was going to do. The stars shone brightly, and he remembered watching the angels falling. He mused on what Ephraim had said about him giving up and decided, perhaps, if he couldn’t have the home he wanted, he should consider the home he’d had before, the home that he was hiding from. 

He kept musing as Dean took them to a drive-thru pharmacy and handed him a small orange vial filled with anti-inflammatories. 

He kept musing as Dean asked him what flavors of pie he hadn’t tried before as they sat down at a booth in an all-night diner a town over. 

He kept musing as Dean insisted he stay the night on the currently unused second bed in his motel room. 

He mused to stop himself from giving in to the warm, comfortable feeling that being around Dean was radiating. He knew all too well that it was only temporary. 

He knew that this all consuming feeling that he was homeless would return the moment he put the keys into the Gas N’ Sip’s door and Dean drove away. 

He’d been trying to make the Gas N’ Sip his new home, and he’d almost convinced himself it was, but Dean and Ephraim had completely upset that notion. 

There were places that he’d much rather be, and he knew now that the Gas N’ Sip would never fill the void where home should be. Yet, while he knew that circumstances wouldn’t allow him to go home now, he had been reminded that there were wrongs that he needed to right and places unknown that he needed to go. 

So, when, not long after Dean had driven away, a middle aged man came in and asked if he could leave his grandfather’s old Lincoln and a _for sale_ sign on the grass beside the Gas N’ Sip’s parking lot, Cas offered to buy it. 

He’d been saving every coin he'd earned to move to somewhere more permanent in Rexford, but he knew now that Rexford was never going to be permanent. 

So with a wistful glance at the shelves he had so methodically organized, he took his meagre possessions -- a sleeping bag, a toothbrush, and three neatly folded shirts -- and set them in the trunk. 

He realized, as he put the keys in the ignition, that he could have used the stolen credit card Dean had given him that morning, but he was glad he hadn't.

He’d never needed or particularly wanted a car before, but this felt right somehow. He felt like he'd earned it, like he’d done one part of this human thing right, and like he had something that was wholly his. 

And if the Winchesters were anything to judge by, a car could be a home.

For now, this one was going to be his.

**Author's Note:**

> [catalogercas](http://catalogercas.tumblr.com)


End file.
